Toilet seats, and where provided, toilet lids, are commonly mounted for easy pivoting between open and closed positions. Toilets provided in aircraft lavatories have generally the same design.
Some conventional aircraft toilets, however, are prone to unexpected service interruptions because the toilet seat hinge arrangement fails. For example, the conventional arrangement in an aircraft has hinge pins on either side of the toilet seat and lid, and these pins can wear and allow the seat and lid to migrate. If the seat or lid becomes detached from its mounts, or if the seat is loosened from its mounts and lacks stability, then aircraft passengers may not be permitted to use the toilet. In addition to inconvenience, in some cases such a service outage may cause a delay or cancellation of a flight, which poses high costs to the airline, the passengers and a number of other parties.